By Nick Simonson; With wetter conditions and generally milder temperatures, hunters found additional challenges when it came to both waterfowl and upland hunting in North Dakota as a slowed corn harvest, flooded fields, and sometimes swampy access played a part in making sportsmen and women adjust on the fly to find success.

Wet for Waterfowl, According to Dane Buysse, Biologist for Ducks Unlimited, the warm and wet beginning to the duck hunting season in the Peace Garden State presented a slow start to the migration and gave ducks unique positions for feeding, as some corn fields across the region flooded, giving the birds cover, food and water all in one place. “We did have a fairly wet fall. That moisture is going to provide some great recharge of wetlands and regrowth of those grasslands coming in the spring. So hopefully we can continue to have some productive habitat on the landscape,” Buysse suggests, continuing “there were patchy areas too where some of the folks were seeing them in flooded corn. Those scenarios you’re seeing [ducks] pulled in from other areas when you get those types of feeding opportunities,” he concludes of the wet conditions and their impact on duck hunting and the birds’ movement as they stopped in the region. Generally warmer temperatures into November also limited the movement of ducks down from their nesting areas in Canada, but when a cold snap hit late in the month, those hunters willing to brave the chill found great numbers of birds making their way through the area. “Early on we had decent numbers around here and there was a lull that people seemed they were seeing. A lot of them were staying up in Canada,” Buysse details, adding, “People were seeing them late, especially later on into the season in late November when that cold weather started coming in, birds pushed down from Canada and folks were seeing some success with that,” he concludes.

Grouse Struggle, Pheasants & Huns Solid, The wet conditions this season also spurred an increase in mosquitos present on the landscape, and an increase in reported West Nile virus cases in people around North Dakota may tie to some downtrends in select upland species. North Dakota Game & Fish Department Upland Game Biologist RJ Gross posits this is one possible explanation for a decrease in sharptailed grouse numbers this fall, as hunters struggled to find good concentrations of the birds on a regular basis. This possible factor is on top of weak production from an inclement breeding period early in the spring for the state’s native upland birds. “Truth be told, we don’t know exactly what the deal is. We suspect there’s maybe West Nile as the state did have a lot of cases of human West Nile this year. It’s hard to test in birds, we do have a few late season harvested birds that we can take blood off of and we can test them for antibodies. But we’ll just have to hope for a good winter for them, and some good success next year to have them rebound,” Gross details on the status
of sharptailed grouse this fall. Meanwhile, ringneck pheasants and Hungarian partridge were about on par with the numbers that were expected from the agency’s roadside surveys this summer. Hunters found good numbers where there was sufficient habitat, and even the northwestern corner of the state – where hail and heavier rainstorms were the summer trend
produced good harvests of pheasants going into the final days of the season, according to Gross. “That southeast still is not as good as it used to be, and I think people are starting to shift away from that, going more to the southwest. Even around Lake Sakakawea and up in the northwest, there were a lot of good reports. They were worried over there with all the hail that they had that they wouldn’t have as good of success, but it definitely depended because there were people who said there were more birds than in years before,” Gross details on overall pheasant hunting success by region headed into the final days of the season.

The majority of North Dakota’s duck seasons wrapped on Dec. 7, 2025, with the late season resident high plains unit open until Jan. 4, 2026, and the upland hunting seasons for partridge, grouse and pheasants running until Jan. 4, 2026, as well.
Simonson is the lead writer and editor of Dakota Edge Outdoors.

Featured Photo: Pheasant numbers were confirmed throughout the state as being on par with survey results from the summer. Simonson Photo.